Zachary Levi says people don’t want to work with him due to controversial opinions

In December, Shazam star Zachary Levi told Bill Maher that he had yet to see what “the ultimate effects” of his vocal support for President-elect Donald Trump and other headline-making controversial opinions would be. Five months later, he’s sharing the most glaring result: a stark disconnect from some of his Hollywood peers.

“I know that there are people that would prefer not to work with me now because of my opinions. My team has let me know,” Levi told Variety in a profile of the actor published on Thursday. “They haven’t given me any specific names, but there are people who prefer not to work with me at this time. And it’s unfortunate.”

He added, “I knew that was probably going to happen. I didn’t make this decision blindly or casually.”

Levi, a longtime supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who endorsed Trump in September, has made headlines in recent years for sharing controversial opinions, including his criticism of the SAG-AFTRA strike, which he later walked back. Prior to that, two months before the release of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Levi shocked fans with his response to a tweet asking if Covid-19 vaccine maker Pfizer posed “a real danger to the world.” Levi responded, “Hardcore agree.”

Then, in September, Levi came under fire for politicizing the death of beloved stage performer Gavin Creel. During an hour-long livestream that Levi then posted on his grid, the Chuck star — who previously worked with Creel in the 2016 Broadway revival of She Loves Me — claimed the actor would still be alive had he not received the COVID-19 vaccine. His comment came less than a month after Creel died from a rare and aggressive form of cancer on Sept. 30 at age 48. 

Among those who criticized Levi’s comments was Tony award-winning Broadway star Norbert Leo Butz, who slammed the actor for using Creel’s death to promote an anti-vax agenda. 

“Really tried to give you the benefit here. Made it halfway through, which was hard as hell,” Butz wrote of Levi’s lengthy livestream. “But was utterly heartbroken, as he would have been, that you felt the need to use his life and legacy to promote this awful platform.”

Laura Benanti, who shared the stage with Levi and Creel in She Loves Me, echoed this sentiment while discussing the actor on a December episode of the That’s a Gay Ass Podcast,

“To use [Creel’s] memory for his political agenda and to watch him try to make himself cry until he had one single tear, which he did not wipe away,” Benanti said. “I was like, ‘F— you forever.'”

In the same conversation, Benati confessed that working with Levi was unpleasant, explaining, “Everyone was like, ‘He’s so great,’ and I was like, ‘No, he’s not.’ He’s sucking up all the f—ing energy in the room. He wants to mansplain everybody’s part to them.”

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Around the time, Levi seemed nonchalant about the backlash he was facing from his peers. When Maher pressed the actor on the public reaction during an episode of his Club Random podcast, Levi quipped that he had no knowledge of being canceled “yet.”

He continued, “I mean, if it happens, it happens… I already had multiple jobs that I was in the process of shooting or that I have yet to shoot, and none of those have been compromised.”

He elaborated to Mahar, “None of my producers or any of the studios behind those films or projects have called and said, ‘Hey listen this is a line too far, and we can’t have you associated with the project anymore.’ We’re all still full steam ahead on those. How it ultimately plays out in the future? I don’t know.”

That said, the Harold and the Purple Crayon actor noted that he had been busy filming and was yet to discuss the matter with his team. “They might say, ‘Hey listen, we’ve had some phone calls with some people and they don’t wanna work with you anymore.’ I don’t know,” he said in the December interview.

Clearly, those people made some phone calls between the end of 2024 and now.

Levi, whom Hotel Tehran director Guy Moshe called a disrupter, told Variety that he’s “open” to the idea that he’s wrong about certain things. “It’s great hubris and folly to think that you are incapable of being bamboozled,” he said. “We are all capable of being bamboozled. I could be getting bamboozled right now, putting my trust into leaders that I helped to get elected.” 

But the Tangled star shared that while some have turned down working with him, there are “a lot of people on that side of the political spectrum who are even more inclined to hire me and to want to do business with me because ‘I need some people who voted another way,'”

He added, “They see that what I did was at great risk. And they were like, ‘You know what? I give you a lot of props for that because that’s not an easy thing to do.’ And I go, ‘I appreciate that.'”